Swl Short Wave Listening Hobby
Radio wasn’t made first as an advanced broadcasting station but it was made like a little amateur station. There were people who were operating transmitters and sending signals "on air" but those operators wouldn’t have any meaning if there wouldn’t be a wide audience of listeners.
In present time many of the licensing institutions dropped the issuing of the listeners IDs and simplified issuing of operational call signs. This allowed many international organizations to start issuing listeners IDs. Many HAM radio operators still want to have listener’s calls for cases when they hear interesting rare station but this station doesn’t hear them. Then operator becomes listener, and goes to the next part of this hobby described belove:
Well you may ask why cant I simply listen radio without any ID? Of course you can listen without ID but listening is only one part of SWL hobby, the other large interest is to exchange cards, proving the fact of the heard station being on air at the time of reception. This cards are usually contain information about date, time, bands, quality of signal of heard station and call sign of the operator with with call of operator that he/she had a contact with. These cards are usually beautifully made and worth as collectible items. To send the card you need to identify yourself as uniquely as possible and call sign is a great tool for identification, the person involved in this hobby can tell a lot about other person just by his/her call.
What do you need to start listening? Of course you need a special receiver.
- Nice to have specially made for shortwave “communicational receiver” but those cost quite some money. You can go for some cheaper portable receivers that have ability to receive SSB(Single Side Band) modulated signals, which are used by amateur radio stations.
- Also, you would need to design and create your card that you will exchange with heard operators, unless you don’t want to do it, then you don’t need call sign either.
- If you decided to go for card collection as well, then you need to apply for your listener’s call sign which can be issued either by local radio club or one of international clubs.
Now, to get more information about this hobby and some more specifics (like frequencies of amateur radio) you can search internet for “SWL” or “HAM radio”. Hope you would be interested in this hobby and it will bring you a lot of joy.
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